Building Ecological Governance

Now that we have the structure of Santa Cruz County and municipal governance well in hand in previous posts, HERE and HERE, and the natural laws that constrain human population and economic growth HERE, how do we visualize and reorganize governance in the Santa Cruz Bioregion to build a democratic, ecological society supportive of all life in the Natural World?

We learn, from infancy to adulthood, that humans are intimately, inescapably an interdependent part of the natural world. We learn that we cannot pretend we can continue to over-consume the resources required by all life, forcing the non-human inhabitants into homelessness.

We make ecology and conservation key components of education from Kindergarten to degreed education, so as to include consideration for the health and well being of the natural world in all policies and programs in government and industry. We break the stranglehold of corporate capitalism on popular culture, government and the economy.

We wrestle to the ground and hog tie corporate advertising that promotes continuous economic growth and consumption, that celebrates high human birth rates, that diminishes the perception of sufficiency and adequacy and promotes profligacy, greed and avarice as central social values.

We change our form of governance, de-emphasize personality politics, and rebuild democracy in place of corporate oligarchy, authoritarianism, and centralization of political power. We build political power from the bottom up through a network of neighborhood and craft assemblies as the basis for local political organization.

Grass roots local governance

A recent article in Yavor Tarinski’s outstanding blog echos my thoughts about neighborhood assemblies based on environmental understanding as part of ecological governance at the bioregional level:

Envisioning democratic and ecological cities

“The basis on which such democratic and ecological cities should be built is a process of constant popular self-institution. In other words, this implies the collective creation of participatory decision-making bodies, through which the citizens to be able directly to shape the laws and rules of their common urban habitat.

The political foundations of our cities then, could be based not on centralized bureaucratic mechanism, but on networks of popular assemblies. These bodies will be the main locus of power, through which the citizens will shape the common framework of policies and laws to which all urban dwellers should abide to.”

I’ve written about neighborhood assemblies extensively on We Live in the Natural World: HERE and HERE for example. This is the ultimate answer to reviving democracy in our own communities, urban and rural. It’s not a popular idea with government representatives and paid staff, nor with non-profits and corporate industry whose livelihoods depend on easy access to centralized authority to do their bidding.

Organizing our political world from the grass roots instead of top down is the only effective path to bioregional governance that fosters conservation and protection of the natural world, for itself, not just for human use.

Good News!

Following our previous post and your outpouring of dismay for the fate of this Strawberry Madrone, Ecology Action heard your heartfelt concern and sent out a letter in response, saying, in part:

All of us at Ecology Action have been touched by how many people in our neighborhood have come to love and value the tree – and be moved to protect it.  And we want to protect it.

After some late night brainstorming and penciling, we have found a way to do just that.  … we are proposing to move our bike storage building further away from the South lot line so the tree can remain.

Thank you Ecology Action for doing the right thing!

Environmentalists, Save This Tree!

I was surprised and appalled to learn that Ecology Action is planning to kill and remove the Strawberry Madrone tree at the corner of the Ecology Action/Cruzio parking lot (circled in red).

Trees are a precious part of our local environment, especially in downtown Santa Cruz where so few of them are left. Trees are not just machines for carbon sequestration, they are living, breathing residents of the natural world, providing shade, habitat for numerous bird and insect species, and integral components of the living soil that all too frequently is buried beneath concrete, asphalt and buildings. Killing and removing trees removes shade and cooling transpiration, exacerbating local warming in the urban heat island.

Replacing this native tree and its living soil with a storage shed for electric bicycles sends the message that Ecology Action does not understand the basic principles of ecology, and doesn’t care about mechanical destruction of the natural world in which we live.

It would be far better for Ecology Action’s image to spare this tree, enhance the tiny corner of living soil that supports it, and build the storage shed for electric bicycles on the parking spaces beside it. Replacing car parking spaces with electric bike storage is in keeping with Ecology Action’s stated goals, enhanced by acknowledged care for trees and the natural world.

As found on the Ecology Action web site: “We all have the power to build an equitable future by making simple, everyday sustainable changes in how we live and work in our communities.” https://ecoact.org/our-work

Contact Kirsten Liske (kirsten.liske@ecoact.org) and encourage Ecology Action to spare this tree!

Living in a World of Natural Laws

In the previous two posts, I reviewed Santa Cruz County Governance and Environmental Plans, General Plans and Strategic Plans, the mishmash of rules and regulations by which humans attempt to order the human built world. Unfortunately, human social organization largely disregards the non-human world, other than as a source of “free” resources.

This results in a fatal disregard for the physical laws and natural processes that order the entire Universe, including the human built world, a subset of the natural world.

The science of ecology is the study of living beings and their connections to their physical environment. Though these relationships are often portrayed as applying only to other than human species, humans and the human built world are inextricably entwined in the Natural World and its relationships and processes.

In The Closing Circle, Nature, Man & Technology, 1971, ecologist Barry Commoner summarized these relationships in four “Laws of Ecology”: 

Everything is connected to everything else – ecosystems are complex and interconnected. “The system,” Commoner writes, “is stabilized by its dynamic self-compensating properties; these same properties, if overstressed, can lead to a dramatic collapse.” Further, “the ecological system is an amplifier, so that a small perturbation in one place may have large, distant, long-delayed effects elsewhere.”

Everything must go somewhere – there is no ultimate waste in the natural world, matter and energy are preserved, and the waste produced in one ecological process is recycled in another. For instance, a downed tree or log in an old-growth forest is a life source for numerous species and an essential part of the ecosystem. Likewise, animals excrete carbon dioxide into the air and organic compounds into the soil, which helps sustain plants upon which animals will feed.

Nature knows best – “holds that any major man-made change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.” “The absence of a particular substance from nature,” Commoner writes, “is often a sign that it is incompatible with the chemistry of life.”

There is no such thing as a free lunch – “In a way,” writes Dr. Commoner, “this ecological law embodies the three previous laws. Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be lost or gained and which is not subject to overall improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long.”

Though these observations seem self-evident, they have been ignored over the past 10,000 years by humans intent on material “progress,” if that’s what it is, exploitation of finite resources, and extirpation of non-human species in futile attempts to control Nature to support exclusive human growth and expansion.

We humans are coming face to face with the inescapable reality of natural limits to human growth and consumption. If we are to survive as a species, in company with the remaining species we have yet to extirpate, we must find ways to live in harmony in the natural world. Humans are not, despite current trends to the contrary, destined by genetics to live as exploiters and destroyers of the natural world. Many cultures lived for centuries in close harmony with others species of plants and animals on which they depended. A few have survived the onslaught of civilization, though dwindling rapidly.

In my web site The Way of Nature, I explore alternative historic and contemporary ways of viewing Life, the Universe and Everything, and the place of human societies and cultures in the natural world.

“In the year 9595
I’m kinda wonderin’, if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing
Woah-oh” Zager And Evans – In The Year 2525,

If man is gonna be alive, and woman too, we’re going to have to find a Way of scaling back this runaway train of civilization, and relearn how to Live in the Natural World.

Next up: How do we live in a world of Natural Laws in our own bioregion?

Environmental Plans, General Plans and Strategic Plans

Plans, plans, plans – We got ’em!

Attempting to ferret out the various and sundry environmental programs & policies, initiatives, plans and regulations is like unraveling a densely knitted sweater: many interconnected threads, with numerous knots and intertanglements, and a propensity to stretch when worn.

Santa Cruz County Plans

2024 General Plan & Appendices

  • The purpose of the Santa Cruz County General Plan/Local Coastal Program (LCP) is to guide and regulate land use and development in unincorporated Santa Cruz County.

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan

  • The 2022 Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (2022 CAAP) includes the most current data on climate impacts in unincorporated Santa Cruz County that inform a strategic framework with actionable to steps towards reducing the causes of global warming, adapting our communities to climate hazards and ensuring the safety and well- being of those most vulnerable to climate change.

Local Hazard Mitigation Plan 2021-2026

  • The County of Santa Cruz developed this Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) to create a safer community. The LHMP represents the County’s commitment to reduce risks from natural and other hazards and serves as a guide for decision-makers as they commit resources to reducing the effects of potential hazards. The LHMP serves as a basis for the State Office of Emergency Services (OES) to provide technical assistance and to prioritize project funding. (Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) §201.6.)

2024 Sustainability Update

  • The Sustainability Policy and Regulatory Update is a comprehensive update to the County’s General Plan/Local Coastal Program and modernization of the County Code. The project also includes new County Design Guidelines and rezoning of certain properties. The goal of this update is to implement new policies and code regulations that support more sustainable communities in Santa Cruz County.

County Code

City of Santa Cruz

General Plan 2030 and Local Coastal Program

  • A general plan is a comprehensive, long range and internally consistent statement of a city’s development and preservation policies. It sums up the City’s philosophy of growth and preservation, highlights what is important to the community, and prescribes where different kinds of development should go. State law requires that cities prepare general plans and regularly review and update them. The preparation of the draft GP 2030 was a community based process led by a 17 member General Plan Advisory Committee.

Area Plans and City Zoning Code

  1. Title 24: Zoning Code
  2. Title 24.10: Land Use Districts Code
  3. ARANA GULCH MASTER PLAN
  4. ARTS MASTER PLAN
  5. BEACH SOUTH OF LAUREL PLAN
  6. CITY-WIDE CREEKS AND WETLANDS MANAGEMENT PLAN
  7. DELAWARE ADDITION PLANNED DEVELOPMENT DESIGN GUIDELINES
  8. DOWNTOWN PLAN – FINAL 2023
  9. EASTSIDE BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT PLAN
  10. GENERAL PLAN 2030 – AS AMENDED
  11. HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT
  12. HOUSING ELEMENT 2015-2023
  13. JESSIE STREET MARSH PLAN
  14. LOCAL COASTAL PROGRAM AND COASTAL LAND USE POLICIES AND MAPS
  15. LOCAL HAZARD MITIGATION PLAN
  16. MISSION STREET URBAN DESIGN PLAN
  17. MOORE CREEK CORRIDOR ACCESS & MANAGEMENT PLAN
  18. OCEAN STREET AREA PLAN
  19. RIVERFRONT AND LOWER PACIFIC STUDY-DESIGN GUIDLINE
  20. SAN LORENZO URBAN RIVER PLAN
  21. SEABRIGHT AREA PLAN
  22. SPHERE OF INFLUENCE AMENDMENT – DRAFT EIR
  23. SPHERE OF INFLUENCE AMENDMENT FINAL EIR
  24. WESTERN DRIVE MASTER PLAN

City of Scotts Valley

City of Capitola

City of Watsonville

And that’s not all, folks! Many of these plans are Chinese boxes, with plans within plans, cited plans from other agencies, old plans moldering away in some warehouse, never to see the light of day, and yet more plans being hatched even as we read these lines.

Take a moment to tiptoe through the plan field, and make note of those plans that have to do with protection, preservation and restoration of the the natural world, and those plans which have to do with “resource” management, aka, managing stuff for human use. Count the few of these plans that protect the natural world from human destruction, and compare that with the majority of the plans that regulate (aka, allow) human use and consumption of the natural world for human benefit.

Coming up next – What are the natural environmental, ecological and physical laws by which all life must live, or take that long trip down the porcelain parkway to extinction oblivion?

Santa Cruz County Governance

Environmental protection and restoration

Santa Cruz County is the smallest county in California, with a population of some 270,000 residents living in a county of 670 square miles, 162 square miles of which is water. It contains four incorporated cities, Santa Cruz, Capitola, Scotts Valley and Watsonsville, surrounded by the unincorporated Santa Cruz County.

Local government consists of the County Board of Supervisors, four City Councils and a myriad of commissions, committees and advisory body, plus unelected staff in the various county and municipal governments.

  • The County of Santa Cruz has 43 formal advisory bodies, listed and described HERE.
  • The City of Santa Cruz has 14 formal advisory bodies, listed and described HERE.
  • The City of Capitola has 7 formal advisory bodies, listed and described HERE.
  • The City of Scotts Valley has 15 formal advisory bodies, listed and described HERE.
  • The City of Watsonville has 4 formal advisory bodies, listed and described HERE.

In addition, there are 15 school boards throughout the county (listed HERE), 10 fire protection agencies (listed HERE), 7 water management agencies (listed HERE). That’s 115 official county and municipal advisory and decision-making bodies to keep track of and manage.

Despite this plethora of local bureaucracy, very little of it is focused on the protection and conservation of the natural world.

The County of Santa Cruz ostensibly has two departments associated with environmental protection:

  • The County Parks, Open Space & Cultural Services Department “advises the County Board of Supervisors and the Department of Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services on recreational programs, facilities, and parklands within the unincorporated area and outside the boundaries of the four special recreational districts of the County of Santa Cruz.” However, the current Director of the Department has unofficially changed the department name on its website to “Santa Cruz County Parks,” thus ignoring its County Code mandate to manage county designated open space.
    • Consequently, the County Parks and Recreation Commission no longer functions to advise the department and Board of Supervisors on the natural world within county designated open space properties. The commission is staffed by the County Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services Director who has restructured the commission to meet only four times a year, thus drastically limiting its ability to respond in a timely matter to Parks, Open Space and Cultural Services problems and concerns.
  • The Environmental Health Department is tasked with protecting human health, not the health and well-being of the natural world.

The County Commission on the Environment acts as an advisory body to, and resource for, the County Board of Supervisors. The Commission is charged with recommending policies and action programs designed to improve and protect the environment, however the commission acts almost exclusively on climate change impacts to humans. Staff support for the commission is by the County Planning Department.

The County Water Advisory Commission “advises the Board of Supervisors on all matters relating to water policy, to ensure that the production of water and the development of additional water supplies
are consistent with the growth management program and the General Plan of Santa Cruz County, and recommend to the Board of Supervisors any policies necessary to protect the watersheds, groundwater, fish and game, and recreational resources of Santa Cruz County.” The County Public Works Department provides staff support for the Commission.

The City of Santa Cruz has no department tasked with conservation and protection of the natural world.

  • The City Parks and Recreation Commission “advises the City Council on all matters concerning public recreation, including playgrounds, music, and entertainment” and is staffed by the City Parks and Recreation Department Director.

The City of Capitola has no department tasked with conservation and protection of the natural world. The City of Capitola Parks, a division of the Public Works Department, is responsible for maintenance of all City owned parks

  • The Capitola Commission on the Environment has an “interest in protection and enhancement of the City’s environment and assist the City Council in promoting sustainable development, greenhouse gas reduction measures, green building techniques, protection and enhancement of Soquel Creek, the ocean and Capitola Beach, and associated riparian and special habitat areas.”

The Scotts Valley Parks and Recreation Department provides a variety of public parks, recreation facilities and recreation programming for the community.

  • The Scotts Valley Parks and Recreation Commission is generally responsible for advising the City Council regarding policies for the acquisition, development, maintenance and improvement of park facilities, making recommendations as appropriate.

The City of Watsonville Environmental Division of the Public Works Department “was created to protect, enhance, and restore the City’s environmental resources in balance with our community’s needs while meeting all regulatory and statutory requirements by way of a comprehensive management of policies, grants, and community engagement efforts.”

The vast majority of county and municipal “environmental” activity is focused on climate change, Greenhouse gas emissions and climate adaptation. Environmental protection and restoration arises in response to development projects, especially those that require a CEQA Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Unfortunately, for the natural world, CEQA never prevents environmental impacts, it only regulates them. CEQA documents include a Findings of Facts and Statement of Overriding Considerations, which allow the lead agency for a project to present excuses for why the project should continue despite unavoidable and unmitigatable environmental impacts.

Since there is only a narrow single track pathway for environmental protection in county and municipal governments, local natural habitats and resources suffer impacts from government planned and funded growth and development policies and projects. County and city paid staff conceive of and plan development projects behind closed doors, revealing them to the public only when absolutely required, limiting the public to reacting to preordained project plans. Commissions and advisory bodies often meet semi-monthly or quarterly, making it impossible for the public to weigh in on proposed government activities in a timely manner.

Ironically, the County and municipalities have numerous ordinances, plans and policies for protection of the natural world, but no meaningful process for effective enforcement.

Coming up next on We live in the Natural World: Environmental plans and policies in county and municipal General Plans and Strategic Plans.

Meanwhile, you can keep track of local government activities and opportunities for public participation on Santa Cruz Online, my weekly compendium of county government and other organization meetings for the coming week.

How to Defend the Natural World

It’s another glorious day here on the Pacific Plate, golden light bathing the eucalyptus and oak trees overlooking the lagoon. An eagle pair has been hanging out in the trees lately, dive bombing the cormorants and coots; one eagle even took a crow yesterday.

It’s been a tough go for wildlife these days, what with a decreasing population of real environmeddlers in the roundabout hereof. Projects to build “environmentally friendly” bike and pedestrian rail trails are decimating local trees by the hundreds, in a long, linear swathe of arboreal mayhem. Multi-story people storage units (aka affordable housing) are popping up everywhere like mushrooms after a rain, their expanses of glittering glass inviting fatal avian collisions. Supposedly “emission-free” electric go-mobiles, one-wheeled, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, proliferate on the newly widened highways and ubiquitous, narrow bike lanes, sucking power from wind generator farms and solar panels slathered over the desert beyond yon horizon.

All of this environmental destruction is enabled, regulated and encouraged by a county Board of Supervisors, commissions, committees, non-profits and various municipal city councils, peopled by increasingly woke members lacking any essential knowledge and experience of the natural world.

The few remaining environmental activists in this bioregion are regularly steam-rollered under the overweening lumbering bureaucratic mega-machine fueled by inexperience, ignorance, apathy and greed. Ecological research, data, and facts are viewed as irrelevant in an atmosphere dominated by climate change hyperbole, self-serving inclusiveness and narrowly applied social justice.

The bureaucrats, government toadies and industry apologists have memorized their lines well and know their marks on the political stage. The system of city, county, state and federal legislation is well greased to facilitate development projects approval as quickly and efficiently as possible. Centuries old “Significant” and “Heritage” Trees are felled at the drop of a logger’s hard hat, houses destroyed in recent forest fires are being rebuilt in the same places despite continuing risks of fire and landslides.

Human domination of the Natural World continues apace, reducing natural habitats, diminishing biodiversity, encouraging erosion and sediment deposition into local streams, polluting the ground, water and air on which all life depends.

What do, what to do?

Resist much, obey little. Speak the truth at every opportunity. Be the change. Stand up for what we stand on. Pull back the curtain and pay attention to the humans at the controls of the Vast Machine who profit from the destruction of the Natural World.

At the end of the day, go to bed knowing you have done as much as you could on this day to save what little is left of the Natural World.

Living in Cooperation With the Natural World

The Natural World is a wet and windy place here on the Left Coast this time of year. Not climate change or global warming, just normal winter rain storms. Not disaster, just heavy rain and winds. Some trees down blocking roads and damaging a house here and there. Some homes are without electricity for a few hours. Inconvenient? Yes. Existential threat? No.

Normal weather.

You’d never know it from all the hyperbolic headlines, though.

“Atmospheric river storm to soak state”

“Powerful storm brings high winds, heavy rain to Santa Cruz County”

This persistent perception that we humans are separate from the Natural World, victims of natural disasters, striving for control of powerful forces that impact our daily lives, is an illusion, a particularly egregious illusion that damages us and all of the other than human world.

So-called “extreme weather events,” “atmospheric rivers,” “global warming” and “climate change” personify natural weather and climate variability and give the erroneous perception that weather and climate are separate from humans and can be controlled by humans.

This turns out not be the case.

The weather that we are experiencing this winter does not happen just to us, it happens with us.

Lurid headlines of extreme weather disasters are based on economic losses to humans, not on damage and loss to the natural world, which has evolved with weather and climate extremes. Problems with weather that humans experience are the result of human decisions about where we build our homes and businesses, how we move from home to work and elsewhere, how we condition our homes, cook our meals, dispose of wastes, how we think about the resources and wastes we use and produce.

To make matter worse, Our Fair County Officials are bending over backwards to allow residents to rebuild in the same places where their homes and property were destroyed by fire, floods and landslides. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to increase the risk of forest fires, floods and landslides.

If we really want to live in sustainable human societies, we must relearn how to live in cooperation with natural cycles of weather and resource availability, not in resistance to very real and uncontrollable natural world cycles.

When I lived in Valdez, Alaska, just a snowball throw from the bank of the Lowe River flowing from glaciers in the mountains to the east, nearby residents were threatened by flooding from the glacier silt filled river. A hydrologist was hired to find out how to control the rapidly changing river channels. His answer was, “There’s nothing you can do. The water always wins.”

The best we can do is to modify our collective behavior to reduce the risk to ourselves and to our built infrastructure by choosing wisely where and how to live in cooperation with the Natural World.

Bioregional Democracy

It’s 2024, a New Year and a new political campaign season is under way as we organize to elect three County Supervisors, and four Santa Cruz City Council members.

As I’ve noted in previous posts (HERE and HERE), Santa Cruz County lends itself well to bioregional organization. Supervisorial Districts and Santa Cruz City Council Districts are already bioregionally defined, with borders largely determined by water courses and watersheds.

Click to enlarge

Oddly, though the districts are delineated bioregionally, they are designated by arbitrary numbers, rather than by meaningful descriptions. Comparing the Supervisorial Districts map with the Watersheds map, I would, if I had the power, rename the districts with names meaningful to those who live there, such as: 1) Live Oak/Soquel; 2) Aptos/San Andreas; 3) Santa Cruz/North Coast; 4) Pajaro; and 5) San Lorenzo.

In a similar way, I would rename the Santa Cruz City Council Districts by names reflective of their neighborhoods and the people who live there. For example: 1) Branciforte; 2) Seabright; 3) Bay/Westcliff; 4) Downtown; 5) Pogonip/UCSC; 6) Westside.

This would be a good start to help the people of Our Fair County understand local political organization, and appreciate the effects on the Natural World of decisions by local government representatives.

If you stop the average person on the streets of Santa Cruz City or County, unplug their ear buds, and ask them which voting district they live in, the majority would be unable to identify their district number or even the Supervisor or Council member who represents them. But ask them what neighborhood or community they live in, they will quickly and proudly identify with a particular area, such as Live Oak, Pleasure Point, Aptos, Westside, Eastside, Downtown, San Lorenzo Valley, North County, Mid County or South County.

The basis of bioregional democracy is this identification with the place, neighborhood or area that we inhabit, that we know, that we care about, where we have a stake in the outcome of local government plans and policies. Local political organization should reflect this normal human identification with place, as a means to engage the public in the process of local governance and to receive and embrace meaningful contributions from local residents based on their local experience. This would both help local government representatives to make decisions and craft laws and regulations that are meaningful to the public and appropriate to local social and environmental conditions. It would also increase the credibility of local government representatives in the eyes of local residents.

Over the years, as Santa Cruz has become more populated, urbanized and extensively developed, local government has become more centralized and authoritarian. County and City unelected staff have increased influence on government plans and policies, non-local contracted planners and advisors have replaced knowledgeable staff, and many commissions and advisory bodies have devolved into perfunctory social organizations rather than acting as meaningful public advisory bodies providing a desired service to the Board of Supervisors and city councils.

Democracy requires consistent, on-going public participation with the Board of Supervisors, city councils and county and city commissions, committees and advisory bodies. That means attending meetings of the Board of Supervisors, city councils, planning commissions and other advisory bodies whose purview includes those activities, places, natural habitats, wildlife and plant life that we hold dear and care for.

Bioregional democracy brings consideration for all life in the places we call home into the process of human governance. Let’s keep this in mind as we go through and beyond this election year.

Happy New Natural Year

At the turning of the year, it’s customary to look back at the year that was and forward to the year that is yet to be. Whether your year starts at the Winter Solstice or the next page on the calendar hanging on the wall, the New Year is a time of celebration, regrets and resolutions for new beginnings.

On this third day of the New Natural Year, I celebrate the biodiversity of the place that Jean and I call home and all the life that shares this bit of the Pacific Plate with us, sliding along the edge of North America on its way north to Alaska. The local climate is as close to Paradise as anyone could expect. The sun shines, most of the time, through west and south facing windows, warming my shoulder, face and lap as I pound away on this defenseless computer keyboard. Crows, gulls and red tailed hawks decorate the sky and fill the air with their exuberant calls. The dusky-footed wood rat trying to gnaw its way into the tool shed in the yard has given up and gone elsewhere in search of winter shelter.

On reflection, I regret that in the past year I haven’t written enough, talked to neighbors and friends enough, testified at public meetings enough, communicated my understanding of the natural world and the place of humans as one species among myriad others sharing this bit of the Earth.

Looking forward to the coming Natural Year, I rededicate myself to write and speak more for those neighbors, friends and fellow beings who have no voice in human affairs.

The cumbersome, complex and confounding world of political/economic governance in Our Fair County, and most of the rest of the human world, is dominated by the goals of population and economic growth, for humans and human institutions, that is. Other-than-human species have no say in this dominant social goal, and, at present, few humans speak up to defend the livelihoods of the four-legged, the winged, the flippered, the crawling and squirming, and the neighbors standing majestically in place, whose continuing health and well being is essential to the living biosphere of this bioregion and this planet we all live on and in.

Those of us who are aware, and those who will soon become aware, must make our understanding of the Natural Word known and understood in the halls of government, in public commissions, in places of worship and contemplation, on street corners, across neighborhood fences, texting, phone calls, emails, discussion groups, Zoom meetings, blogs and websites, by whatever means available to us.

This may seem like a conundrum, an oxymoron, an unconformity to use the technologies that are destroying the Natural World to call for their end in its defense. Perhaps so, though we must use the tools we have in hand to change the world to a new/old lifeway that no longer needs them.

I wish for you all and for all Life a Happy New Natural Year, in peace and harmony with all living beings in the Santa Cruz Bioregion we all call Home.